by Nicole Snow
Leo himself, even though I know he’s fine.
He’s fine, dammit.
He’s probably just in his CO’s office getting fitted for a new asshole after being late for the millionth time to his shift. That’s it, I tell myself.
That’s got to be all this is.
Yet as I lift my access card to enter back into the lab, I still. This tight, prickling sensation sizzles through me, winding higher, until I feel like a thin string pulled too taut, poised on the verge of snapping.
The outer door’s open.
Just a crack, the sliding door shifted aside by an inch, but the red lock light over the access card reader is blue, and the door hangs open when no one should be in here yet.
I’m always the first one in the high security area. Always.
Every sense I have sharpens, goes on high alert. I thrust myself to one side of the door, keeping out of sight as I crane to look through the crack and see who’s inside.
I probably look ridiculous to the people going about their business in the hall – or maybe they just think I’ve gone crazy, which is probably already circulating anyway. I don’t know what I’m expecting to see.
No one can get in or out of the Galentron facility without top secret security clearance, and if there’s some kind of corporate spy here, they wouldn’t be this blatant, this bold. It’s probably Fuchsia, doing something unorthodox.
Only it’s not Fuchsia.
It’s a man.
Not one of my lab assistants, either – two are female, and Greg is a slim reed of a man. Not this hulking brute, so big he can barely even fit the personal protective equipment he’s wearing, the white jumpsuit that would be a pillowy mess on anyone else clinging tight to his body, outlining the tactical gear underneath.
Fuck.
I know that build. I know that voice, drifting through the crack in the door in soft, almost manic mutters. I know that step, determined and deadly.
Leo.
And he’s got the containment freezer with SP-73 open, rummaging around inside it like a bear with its paw in a beehive, while puffs of cold air smoke out around him and sink, heavy, down to the floor.
My heart does a sickening nosedive. There’s no instant danger, not when the freezer is nitrogen-cooled and a little room temperature air seeping in won’t raise the virus’ own temperature enough to activate it.
But shit, knowing how angry he was when we talked yesterday, knowing how volatile his temper can be, knowing what he might do if he felt like he had no choice?
We’re boned.
I don’t want to know what he’d do with the hundreds of vials lined up neatly inside the freezer case.
Or what’ll happen if he tries to destroy them improperly, and leaks them into the environment, instead. Or even worse, makes them airborne.
“Leo!” I growl his name, shoving the door open the rest of the way and then rushing inside. Furtive. Quick. Determined.
There isn’t much time.
I keep a sharp eye out, looking over my shoulder before slamming the door shut. I’ll have to dig up security footage later, if I can get access. I need to destroy all record of him breaking into the lab, and whatever else happens in this conversation. “What the hell are you doing?”
He stiffens but doesn’t look back at me. The clink and rattle of vials stops, and some tiny part of me relaxes. The test tubes are shatterproof, but the animal inside me that hears the menacing clatter of glass doesn’t want to register that. It’s just glad the sound that warns of a savage substance coming out has stopped.
“Gray?” he says hoarsely. There’s something strange in his voice, something dark. “Gray, is that you?”
I frown. How does he not recognize my voice instantly? Is it the suit? We’ve known each other for years.
“Yeah,” I answer carefully. “It’s me, Leo. Talk to me. What’s wrong? What’re you doing with the SP-73 sample?”
He turns very slowly. Almost moving like a robot.
Holding a vial of SP-73 tight in his hand. Fuck.
I’m not wearing any personal protective equipment. I didn’t have time, not when I realized the lab was breached.
And I realize, staring at his wide eyes through the faceplate of his suit, he’s not himself. He’s in shock.
Something is very, very wrong, and I need to be extremely careful because the man in front of me isn’t my friend. Right now, his mind is gone, and he isn’t anyone I know.
This man is a cornered, frightened, angry animal. There’s no telling what he’ll do if he feels threatened.
“It’s all wrong, Gray,” he whispers, his fingers tightening convulsively on the test tube. He’s trembling. So is his voice, that rough, deep cadence reduced to a broken whisper.
There’s something red on his face, too. Blood.
I can barely see it past his mask, but it’s streaked down his cheek.
I don’t have any earthly idea whose it is.
Maybe his own. Maybe not.
My heart just goes cold. Something terrible happened to my friend. As soon as I get that test tube out of his hand and the SP-73 secured, and make sure we aren’t heading for prison, I’ll murder whoever did it.
“What’s wrong?” I coax again, taking a careful step closer – then stopping when he tenses, hand tightening convulsively on the vial. The glass is shatterproof but not totally unbreakable.
Shatterproof only protects against drops or knocking it out of the stand. Squeeze it hard enough, and the tube fragments into a million pieces.
Shards that could cut through the suit. Through skin. Deadly fragments that could expose Leo to the virus that could be warming up right now in his hot little hand.
He shakes his head quickly. “Don’t,” he says, hateful and thick. “Don’t fucking come any closer!”
“I’m not.” I hold up both hands, a peace gesture, keeping my voice calm and steady and soothing. “I’m not coming closer. I’m right here. I’m with you, Leo. Now just tell me what happened, why you’re bleeding.”
His dark eyes close, that window into his face like peering into an anguished soul. “It’s...it’s not my blood. Not my goddamn blood at all.”
Fuck.
Chills cut through me. I take a slow breath. “Tell me whose blood, then?”
Leo opens his eyes, staring at me, pleading with me to understand. “The fucking mayor’s,” he spits out quickly. “I couldn’t...I had to do it. He had Clarissa. He was going to...Gray, h-he had to die. She begged me to stay after I did it. Begged me to leave with her. But I had to do something, dammit! Had to save this town from this...shit.”
His eyes flit down like daggers, staring at the substance in the test tube. I swallow, choking what feels like a boulder down my throat.
“Why?” All these people in this town, and he was so angry at the possible loss of life...why would he kill the mayor? Especially when he’s damn well in love with the man’s daughter, and sneaks off every chance he can get to see her? “Leo, what did Mayor Bell do?”
“He’s part of it!” he snarls, and I flinch while his fingers pinch the vial again. “He fucking knew—he knew when Galentron came in. He was complicit, and he already planned to get himself and his family out before...before...”
“Before the test phase was activated,” I finish, dawning horror filling me.
Jesus Christ. The mayor had an escape plan. And he was going to leave this entire town to die.
For how much money, I wonder? How much is worth sacrificing Heart’s Edge?
Nearly a thousand souls, all of them trusting an elected official to protect them who’d served forever, to have their best interests in mind. Galentron came to Heart’s Edge with so many promises – that they’d revitalize the town, bring new jobs, throw new money into the economy when they paid so much to buy out occupancy at the town-owned hotel.
It’s all been lies. Mayor Bell has been part of this from the start. He enabled everything.
If he wasn’t already dead,
I might’ve killed him myself.
But I can’t focus on that right now. I risk a step closer to Leo, releasing my breath from a tightening chest. He doesn’t go tense again.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay, so you tried to get him to stop this, but there’s more layers than that. We can’t do anything drastic, Leo. Not in this lab.” I hope saying his name again and again will bring him down from this trance, reminding him who he really is. Who he is to me, my friend and confidante. “We have to work from the inside. You know that, or they’ll stop us before we can take a single step.”
“No, Gray. No fucking time. They were gonna release it. They can’t stop us now. Not if they’re all dead,” he growls, raising his arm over his head before flinging it down sharply, fingers going lax on the test tube.
My instincts take over before my mind can react.
I dive toward him, slamming him back against the freezer, knocking the door closed and making the tubes inside rattle violently, clutching his arm – and forcing his hand to tighten spasmodically, clutching the test tube instead of letting go.
Gasping haggardly, almost spitting, he fights me, struggling against my weight. Even if he’s bigger than me – a behemoth, this big massive hulk of a man – I’m still tall and strong and fast. I grasp one of his shoulders, driving my fingers into pure muscle, pinning him back against the freezer while I fight like hell for the test tube.
I just need to get it out of his hand. Locked away safely. Then we can talk.
“Dammit, Gray!” he roars, thrusting his knee against me, trying to force me back. “You know this is the only way!”
“Wrong!” I wheeze out a breath as his knee strikes my solar plexus, arching back, but not letting him go. I hurl my entire weight into him, slamming his arm up over his head, ramming it into the freezer. “We can’t kill people, Leo! Not even these assholes who deserve it.”
We’re so close. Locked eye to eye, his gaze boring into mine as I reach up, trying to pull the test tube from his hand.
“Even to save lives?” he whispers. “Why are our lives worth more than theirs? Why do we get to live while they have to die? For what? Money? Goddamn why?”
I don’t have an answer.
For a moment, with that heavy question rattling my head, I lose it.
I falter, break my focus, and that’s when he sees his chance.
He rips away from me, shoving me back so hard I stumble, tumble, crash to the ground so hard I see stars.
Shit. I don’t even need to see to hear the tinkle, the eggshell crack, of shattering glass. Or to hear the sound of my pulse roaring in my ears, ramping up in a rush of adrenaline, horror, sickness.
No fear, oddly enough.
The instant I heard that shattering sound, my fear evaporated. Replaced with a sense of purpose.
I open my eyes, staring at the vial at Leo’s feet. It’s nothing but fragments now, tiny gleaming bits and a pool of pale yellow liquid, thick and viscous still – cold enough to be a plasmid, instead of the active fluid teeming with a living viral payload.
Maybe there’s still time.
Except Leo rips the mask off his suit, his hair sticking up in rough tangles streaked with blood, that savage red mark down his cheek like war paint. He stares at me with desperate eyes turned insane, dark with fury.
“Well,” he says. “This is it. I guess we’re both infected now.”
It’s all I hear. A second later, the alarms start blaring, red lights flashing over the lab, turning it into a nightmare hellscape.
The containment system.
Galentron may be murderous, but they’re all about control – and finely tuned sensors capable of detecting the virus are embedded everywhere, at all levels, accurate down to the microscopic level. The slightest hint of any RNA outside of an enclosed, controlled environment, and the gloves come off.
Total lockdown.
“No, not yet,” I say, and launch myself to my feet, away from Leo and the puddle of virus, throwing myself at the control panel that runs the lab’s systems and the lockdown procedure.
If I can just get into the system in time, enter my override codes, I can prevent the lockdown and get everyone out of here. No one has to die except maybe me and Leo, since we’re directly exposed. But the lockdown will trap everyone where they are, preventing anyone from leaving. Although this virus wasn’t designed to go airborne, anything in a fluid suspension can evaporate and cause disaster.
The air systems are designed to make every room a closed system, so no airborne particles can get to the rest of the facility. Nothing escapes this environment unless we want it to.
But malfunctions happen.
I can’t risk it, I think.
I’ll figure out the karma of my best friend trying to kill me with a virus I nurtured later.
Right now, the system’s not responding. No matter how fast I tap at the screen and the keyboard, it’s faster, locking me out one subsystem at a time as I try to get into security access controls, environmental handling, something.
The only thing it will let me see is the facility-wide security monitoring system.
My breath seizes in my chest, watching all these people – human, no matter how morally rotted some might be, others just as trapped in circumstance as I am – panic. The robotic voice of the lockdown system orders them to shelter in place.
They know they’re going to die.
If the security system determines enough of us have been exposed, there’s no recourse. It’ll gas us all to death before the virus itself can kill us in a matter of minutes. This stuff is slow to warm, but once it gets going, into your system, it’s the fastest killing disease on Earth.
I’ve got to prevent it somehow.
My blood pumps so hard I feel like my entire body throbs as I drive my hands over the keyboard, looking for any backdoors in the system. Any faults in the programming I can take advantage of to stop this.
There – there! – the sprinkler system. Fire suppression. Turning it on will help to dampen any toxic gasses in the air and could possibly even short out the lockdown systems. All the electronics in the facility will get soaked. Some of them are waterproof.
I’m hoping a lot of them aren’t.
Slamming down on the authentication, I trigger a fire drill with the option for sprinkler override set to yes, yes, a million fucking yeses and then look up sharply with a gasp.
Overhead, the sprinkler heads fire on with a sharp hiss and water sprays everywhere, soaking us in an instant like a thunderstorm breaking hot and wild.
“What’re you doing?” Leo gasps. “Why—”
I whirl to face him. “Nobody has to die today,” I snarl. “There’s a better way. There always has to be a better way—”
He looks at me gravely.
It’s the look of a man, a soldier, willing to die for what he believes in.
For just a moment, I wonder where he finds the courage.
“Sometimes looking for a better way just means stepping out of the way of men willing to take action,” he says, slow and certain. “And it means cowardice, when the guys with that power want to use it against the people we’re supposed to protect.”
That hits hard.
Hard and painful and true. We’re both ex-military. Serve and protect.
It’s why we both enlisted. It’s why we lived it.
Trying to do what was right. Trying to protect our country. Trying to save the people, the land we love from anyone who might harm it with this research. That’s what we thought we were doing.
Then we got caught up in the truth of this corruption and their corporate handlers.
Then the ideal we gave our lives for chewed us up and spat us the fuck out as different creatures.
And I wonder who I am, that I’d forgotten what it felt like to be willing to die for my beliefs if they meant doing the right thing.
But before I can say another word, I smell smoke.
There’s a terrible bright spark behind me, one of
the centrifuges shorting out.
Electricity leaps like lightning, lashing out in a violent, bright, blinding explosion, snapping across the banks of machinery. Holy fuck.
The shockwave hits me like an uppercut, throws me back, slams me into Leo, and then whips both of us away from the frozen containment unit and that shattered vial. We hit the wall hard, both of us grunting, bruising force knocking my breath out of my lungs.
Then everything goes dark.
Except I’m not unconscious, even though I’m very disoriented.
Flashing red emergency lights kick in, illuminating the lab in a blood-red hellscape.
First the lights, and then the flames.
Crackling fire torches high, crawling up the wall and the ceiling from the fried machinery, smoke billowing out in choking waves that are already stinging my nostrils and crawling down my throat, making me cough, the smell of burning rubber fucking noxious. And the sprinklers have cut off.
Great.
I’m guessing whatever I did, or whatever the flames did, shorted out their electronic controls. Anything might happen now.
My eyes are stinging. I cover my mouth with my sleeve, turning to my friend.
“Leo, we’ve got to—”
Oh, fuck.
He’s slumped against the wall, more blood coursing down his face. Only this time, there’s no doubt it’s his, from where his head struck the wall. He’s conscious, his eyes open, but it’s not hard to tell he’s not really there.
I’ve got to get us out of here.
Struggling not to breathe too deep, squinting against the smoke rapidly filling the lab, I struggle to my feet, grab one of his hefty arms, and drag him across the floor. The hiss of his jumpsuit follows like a snake’s warning, but I keep moving.
I’ve got to get him away from the containment unit. Whenever the flames get there, we’re fucked.
It’s not the fire I’m worried about.
It’s whenever those flames hit the gas vials in the coolant tanks inside and superheat them. The reaction will blow this place to kingdom come.
The only silver lining is, the fire will incinerate the virus before it goes airborne, that much I’m certain. No more SP-73.